Agent Orange
by PlaidButterfly
Summary: The Phantom's identity has finally been uncovered, and the dark age of the law is nearing its close. Unfortunately, Blackquill is far from being done with the Phantom - and finds himself still embroiled in the strife and intrigue the Phantom's secrets bring.
1. Prologue - Are you scared?

_Are you scared?_

That has been your life's question, ever since three weeks before your 6th birthday. The day when the stern-faced man and the woman in a black suit came to the orphanage. One by one, children were called into the room, then burst out a few minutes later, wailing, sobbing hard, snot and tears coursing down their cheeks.

You didn't really pay much attention to them. You had found a bug and were watching it - a big beetle with a glittery green shell. Its wings didn't quite work right, but that gave you the chance to catch up to it and watch it. Probably meant that it would die soon. But you could appreciate it for the time being.

Then the stern-faced man crushed it with his well polished shoe. "Your turn, boy." He motioned for you to follow. And you did.

The woman in the black suit smiled at you as you entered. On the counter behind her was something wrapped in flashy foil with a band of colorful printing around it. You stared. And as the man closed the door, standing outside, she picked it up and showed it to you. "Do you like chocolate, little one?"

You told her you haven't ever had it, but the smell - the _smell _is making your stomach twist in desperate want and flooding your mouth with saliva. She laughs a little at you, and puts it down again, out of reach. "If you're very good and complete all these tests, I'll let you have it. The whole bar. All to yourself. Now stand straight, please, I need to get some measurements…" And you hardly notice as she pulls out a tape measure and flits around you.

All you are focused on is that chocolate bar. It's imported - obviously so - and the label has a dancing cartoon panda bear on it. The foil is even stamped with smiling images of its face. It reeks of something you will later learn to call _bourgeoisie decadence. _You very clearly know things like it are not allowed here, because the Glorious Leader, who loves all citizens, looks out for the spiritual and physical welfare of the populous. But there is the way it smells, and the way the foil glints. You want it. You _want_ it.

The woman in the black suit smiled at you and then wrote a few things down on her clipboard. "Very good. Now, I need to step out for a moment. My associate will continue the testing. Be sure to answer all his questions, and stand very still and don't move, and if you do these things, you'll get the chocolate bar." Her instructions were clear, and you nodded vigorously to show that you understood.

For a brief moment you considered trying to jump up and get the chocolate bar, and then running off with it. But you didn't think you could manage jumping from a standstill. You were staring at the winking panda mascots printed in the foil, thinking about how to get a running start or move furniture around, when you were interrupted.

The stern-faced man was not friendly, he was not smiling, and he was not holding a clipboard. Instead he reached inside his coat to bring out a gun. A pistol. He pointed it directly at your head.

This, you realized, was what made everyone else cry. For a brief moment it made you want to cry, too, but you were too busy staring at the chocolate bar. The lady told you not do move. So you don't.

The barrel of the gun was cool against your temple, and the man glared down at you, seeming impossibly tall in that moment.

And then he asked: "Are you afraid?"

You didn't answer him quite at first. If you were truthful, you knew, somehow, that the chocolate bar wouldn't be yours. They were adults looking for somebody to say the right thing. So you guessed, and you guessed well.

"No," you told the stern-looking man.

He put his gun away, then opened the door, and let the woman in. Then they talked in whispers: _Nice flat face. It'll be a good blank canvas. __No family, even distant - less chance of being compromised. On schedule for growing well. He'll do. Let's take him._

"Come along," the woman said. Actually, she used your name, but the day after she woke you up before dawn to start training and told you with cold seriousness that from that day forward you had no name. And you believed her. You embraced what she told you so thoroughly you can't even remember it - erased from distant memories completely.

Their car was large and black and foreboding. It was the first time you ever rode in a car. And there was no time to pack - you had to leave all your old clothes behind. You didn't really mind, though, because getting out of the orphanage was supposed to be a happy thing, and you were happy, not because of that, but because you had the entire bar of chocolate all to yourself.

Ten miles down the road to the capitol, your stomach heaved and rejected the sweets. The day after you were made to clean up every speck of the mess. But for those ten miles of bliss, it tasted like victory.

Now the lawyers are here, and they are asking you the same question.

_Are you afraid?_

They are dressing it in finer words, and the girl has her haptic interface up for her device, and you can see a bottom corner blink and pulse with the fear it reads. You can tell you have just started to break out into a sweat.

It would take a miracle for a distraction. And even if it did happen, you wouldn't leave immediately. You would stop by the vending machine on your way out. Food is good. Food is victory. You get fed by completing missions, by being flawlessly in cover, by doing what they tell you to do. A vending machine doesn't have those sort of qualms but your head is spinning sick and you desperately want a taste to remind you so you can feel _full_ of something of _anything _-

There's a woman in the gallery who has been watching you, and you have been watching her (but in a casual way, a spy's way, a way she recognizes). She slipped out a few minutes ago. Down the hallway. Fifteen seconds or less to disable the emergency alarm on the fire door. Up the stairs. To the roof. Unpack bag. Put together rifle. Load rifle. Get into position. Aim.

Any moment now, any moment now -

They are asking that question to you again. How many times do you have to tell them that you are a void, a nothing, and you cannot be these things? You are an absence of, you are a black hole, you are a mask without a face or a soul, you are whoever they need you to be -

Your hands are shaking.

Even as you talk your eyes are desperate, searching. There are police at every exit. There is no way to jump from pieces of rubble up to the top - and even if there was, there is the sniper, waiting. All of these words are flowing out of your mouth before you can stop them. They are yours, but you are a nothing, an absence of, a lack - they cannot be yours, you don't have a voice, you only have voices that they give you - but they are yours?

Your fingers grab a little too firmly as you pull away another mask, and dig momentarily into your own flesh. There will be bruises there tomorrow.

Nearly down to your last mask. Taking it off is unthinkable. Your hands and shoulders are shaking now. Something is twisting inside you. It takes you a moment to figure out what it is. You are so used to looking at a distance, to casually dissecting and then moving on, but this is close and dug in deep to your bones and you can't pry it away. It has been so long since you pushed it away but it has always been there, and you have swallowed it down, and down, and down, until this point, because the floodgates are bursting. You can almost see the hairline cracks on yourself as you unravel. This was not supposed to happen, this was never supposed to happen, they are all so disappointed, they are all thinking you are so very weak, but most of all, they know you are a liability now -

_Are you scared,_ they ask again, and you finally know the answer is yes.

When the sniper's shot finally comes, it is, above everything else, a relief.


	2. Scopophobia

Truthfully, it all seemed unreal.

Simon Blackquill supposed that was reasonable, given the circumstances. It would likely seem more like reality the first full night he spent in his new apartment - cheap, on the knife-edge of gentrification, chosen blindly from a newspaper ad in passing glance and given a discount price due to the railroad tracks nearby. He was absolutely sure that someplace more respectable was out of the question. He needed the noise. After so many years of going to sleep as just another in a crush of rowdy humanity, dead silence wouldn't do. Silence was unnatural. A sign that something worse than the silence itself was about to happen. A few more hours and he would actually lay eyes on the place, pick at the provided furniture with a grimace, and note how the mattress sagged. Maybe then it would seem like it was actually happening to him instead of a dizzy dream.

But he had to keep going, even if right now it felt like he was doing so on automatic. Taka had noticed: the falcon interrupted his preening to peer at Simon, as if willing him back to reality. It took Simon a moment to figure out what the stare was about.

He was holding his hands close in front of him, as if still in shackles.

Simon knew damn well that what he needed was a shower where he could be alone and waste all the time and water he pleased, a full meal of something blessedly not prepared by a prison kitchen, and a good night's sleep preceded by a nightcap of his favourite sake. Then he could let it all settle overnight. He could even have a cup of tea while looking out the window at the pale morning light scurrying down the busy street. He could savor how the worst possible future had flinched at the last moment and gracefully swept itself aside for something far more kind.

Not right now, though. As soon as the Phantom was out of surgery (through-and-through, the surgeon had said - damn lucky of him), they had called, and he had gone. And now he was taking too-long strides down the hallway, letting his thoughts wander as his feet marched on.

He expected Taka to nip his ear and bring him back to the present. What he didn't expect was a gunshot.

That was enough to shake cobwebs of thought free from his mind, and he broke into a run. Instinctively, his hand went to the hilt of his katana, halfway drawing it, and Taka launched himself from Simon's shoulder. The falcon's sense of hearing was keener, and Taka led the way for him - down the final corridor, to the room he roughly remembered as being assigned to Fulbright. No, not Fulbright, he mentally corrected himself. The Phantom.

Taka shrieked, already tangled in the hair of an assailant by the time Simon got to the door. The woman was wearing a set of nurse's scrubs, and had something brightly-colored in her hands - a plastic, 3-D printed gun. As she tried her best to fling Taka away, she tried to fire another shot, and the device simply gave a sad click. Useless after the first shot.

That was when the other man came at her.

Taka flew back to Simon's shoulder, angrily voicing his displeasure, and Simon himself stood and couldn't help but freeze. The other man - the Phantom, he had to assume - launched into something that could have been mistaken for a dance. Both of them moved smoothly, dodging, weaving, blocking blows, both with the same fluidity showing that they had trained for moments such as these with constant vigilance. The woman had a cold snarl on her face. And the man… well, he had hurriedly pulled a thin paper pillowcase over his head. He broke away from dodging her blows before seizing the IV stand behind him. The IV pumps were already squealing in a thoroughly irritating way at being disconnected, and the man had a thick ribbon of blood twirling its way down his arm to drip on the floor, but the woman was giving him no mercy for this. He blocked a kick from her - swung the stand like a halberd, watched her dodge - then again and again, managing to catch her with a thrust, toppling her over, and then bringing it up as he moved to pin her down with a foot firmly on her shoulder - he was aiming for her head -

"CEASE THIS IMMEDIATELY!"

Truthfully Simon was embarrassed that it took him so long to find his voice. But now his katana was out and glinting. Purposefully, he nudged between the shoulderblades of the man holding the IV stand - and the other man immediately dropped it, letting it hit the woman below. The man's pose during the battle had been tight in a well-versed manner, confident in each movement. Now he hunched his shoulders, cowering, putting his hands up and stepping back.

The woman, however, glared solidly at Simon. A line of blood was on her forehead, and her eyes darted around the room with a trapped animal's sort of desperation. Two targets, and only one sword - Simon gambled that the man's submissive body language was truthful, and pointed the katana at her. "Get up. You are officially under arrest for the attempted murder of…" Simon glanced at the other man and corrected himself: "For attempted murder. Anything you say can and will be used -"

Quick as a minnow spooked by a shadow, her hand darted to her shirt pocket -

"agains-STOP!" It was already too late by the time Simon lunged forward. Something went from her pocket to her mouth in a flash, and then she bit down on it heavily. There was a small crunch, and a victorious smile flashed across her face.

He dropped his katana entirely, tumbling forward to pin her down, hands at her shoulders and then at her neck and then prying her jaws apart, fishing around the thick meat of her tongue and bone-white teeth and sticky saliva -

Her hands gave a hard jerk in spasm, and her chest heaved beneath him, the movements unnatural and harsh -

She was smiling around him reaching into her mouth, trying to fish the pill out of her throat -

But - the smell of bitter almond drifted up to him. The triumphant expression on her face fixed and then fell slack, her eyes sliding into staring straight ahead, and her body went limp.

Too late.

The nurses and security personnel were behind him, squeezing in through the door to try and check the woman's pulse. Their chatter went past him - a blur of medical jargon delivered in rapid-fire professional worry. He merely stood up, his hands clenching so hard his knuckles went white. Simon Blackquill was not what one would call a graceful loser, and this felt suspiciously like a loss.

Surprisingly, the other man spoke up before Simon did. "You won't be able to do anything. Cyanide. They give us much larger doses than is needed to do the job."

It wasn't Fulbright's voice. There were innate similarities - just enough to make something deep within Simon flare with fury, like a bonfire that had been given a splash of gasoline. But this was a different pitch, more even-toned. Exhausted, almost, while talking with unflinching honesty.

His sword! A momentary fear pressed white-hot at Simon's mind, and he scrambled to scoop the katana up off the floor. As soon as it was in his hand, he pointed the tip of it at the other man's covered face, and in response the Phantom pressed himself more tightly into the corner as he shirked away. The blood on his arm from the ripped-out IV line didn't seem to be slowing down, and there were bandages looped thick around his shoulder that Simon could see underneath his hospital gown. He held up his hands, almost pleading, trying to block the katana from actually slashing at his face.

"Please - I'm not going anywhere!"

Simon frowned. There was actual fear there. It was clear enough that he could hear its sheer intensity - if Athena had been in the room, she likely would have found it smothering. As it was, Simon nearly found himself choking a little on it. If it seemed false, it would have been tolerable, but this sounded genuine. And desperate. And somehow deeply primal. It wasn't a human type of fear; it was the terror that something small had grown deep in its brain when the night for it was full of jaws ready to make it into a meal. Or earlier than that, even. The spark of two neurons who desperately did not want to fail the most basic task assigned them.

"I'm not running, please, I'm not going anywhere - if I step outside I'll get shot again, and this time, it won't be a warning shot - please - I don't want to die!"

His shoulders were shaking again. He looked to be on the verge of another meltdown, a sick replay of what had ended the trial in court. Simon couldn't help a thought scurrying in-between the others: _my God, you really have broken him, haven't you? _And Simon was not entirely sure that was something to be proud of.

"I can be useful," the man continued to beg. "Please, I promise, I can be so useful, it's too late to use me for counter-intelligence now, but I can tell everything I know - I can get you into the classified files, but we'll need to go now, it's coded to my fingerprint, but everything's there and -"

"_Silence!_"

The nurses behind him jumped, and they all stared, even as their hands worked at the impossible task of trying to revive the woman spy. More importantly, the man - the Phantom - flinched, putting his hands up to guard his covered face.

"I can make a decision after…" Simon let his sword drift upwards, nudging part of the paper pillowcase that the Phantom wore as a makeshift mask. "I see your face. I believe I am owed that much, at least, before this conversation continues."

If anything, his fear only multiplied. "Please, no, I can't -"

"Not can't. Won't."

"_I can't!_" He bawled, trembling, scared in such a feral way that it was making Simon anxious to simply be near him. He was breathing so hard that the pillowcase kept getting sucked into his mouth, then pushed out again, giving occasional brief glimpses of what his lips must look like in impression. It took him a moment for him to speak, but even then his words were too quick, almost piling up in a mumbled slurry of desperation. "I could - I can wear a surgical mask - j-just something, anything, I can't show all of my face, I can't, my eyes would be enough, wouldn't they? I promise, I'll stay out of trouble - just a surgical mask -"

Simon flicked the katana a little closer. "You're hardly in a position to make any demands."

The Phantom couldn't find words. He settled for a long, keening whine. A noise not dignified for an animal, much less a man. It made Simon narrow his eyes, and then flick his wrist; the katana danced obediently in his hand, tearing the paper and letting the blunt edge pull it up and over. As soon as the paper pillowcase was lifted up and over, the man gave a scream and scrambled to cover his face in such a vicious movement that he fell over, eventually righting himself only to curl on the ground with his hands over his head as if in a full kowtow. His breaths were sobbing, and he was shaking so hard that Simon could see the muscles in his back flinch in waves.

Simon ran his tongue along the back of his teeth in thought. "You're more scared of that then dying, aren't you." It wasn't quite a question - more a statement of fact. The Phantom nodded, confirming it. But Simon's katana still lingered close. The blade wormed between the man's hands, making him flinch and move them to where he was clutching at the back of his neck. And then, finally, he could worm the blade near the Phantom's jaw, even as the Phantom pressed his forehead to the floor. "Lift your head." Another nudge. This time the Phantom didn't move. "_Lift. Your. Head._" Even biting out the words in anger didn't generate any movement.

So he settled for nodding at Taka, guiding the bird to follow his glance to a dispenser of masks in the room. Obediently, Taka went to grab one, dropping it into Simon's free hand.

As much as it pained him, it seemed the only way to get through to the Phantom would be with honey instead of vinegar.

The mask was a kindness, and a kindness he didn't want to give. But the man was sobbing, hysterical, hardly able to even breathe. The Phantom wasn't even responding to the tip of the katana blade digging into his neck as Simon tried to get him to raise his head. Simon wasn't very good with sweet-talking, even with his training, but he at least could manage calm. "Lift your head. Let me see the face of the man who killed Metis Cykes, and then you'll get the surgical mask to wear while you are escorted to your secure cell."

The Phantom continued to weep in haphazard terror. Strange, Simon thought, how the near-emotionless spy had suddenly become a sobbing mess. Something - some wall, some defense - had come undone, and the man huddled in the corner was unravelling as clear as a ruined sweater caught on a door's lock.

But eventually, he did lift his head.

His eyes were closed, and he was grimacing against each sob. But beyond that, his face was - well, if Simon had to put a word to it, _generic._ Asian, but not anywhere specific; his nose, perhaps, was a little flatter than others'. The only striking feature seemed to be the one he was most intent on hiding. A burn stretched up one side of his face, from his jaw to his eyebrow, blossoming on his cheek. It was purposeful, and had obviously been placed there by human hands instead of any accident.

Simon flicked the surgical mask towards him. Immediately the Phantom scrambled for it, putting it on as quickly as possible, then going back to covering his face with his hands as he wept. And Simon became aware that the staff behind him had finally given up on the woman spy, and were lifting her onto a gurney to take her body to the morgue.

Not even a few full hours as a free man, Simon Blackquill thought bitterly, and he already had a headache blossoming between his eyes that only the best sake could fix.


	3. Cherophobia

"Jesus, not even a day's break and they've got you back in the thick of it. Here, take this, I'll take that; the name's Ema Skye, detective, and here's a few base rules. One, show a little due deference, it's ma'am or even sir, it's taken me years to get here and I'm damn well abusing my power now; two, make any off-color joke about my sister and on your own head be it and hope you can pay for facial reconstruction surgery; three, never interrupt snackoos time, and I mean never, okay? Capiche? Great."

Blackquill had barely opened the door when the rapid-fire introduction came, and the evidence bag in his hands was quickly swapped out for a plastic glass of something alarmingly green, foamy, and sweating pearls of condensation on the outside.

"That's a green tea frappuchino by the way. You'll like it, trust me, I can tell somebody's Starbucks order just by looking at them. It's a talent. Like a sixth sense."

"It's true," one of the others piped up from his spot at the computer. "It's really uncanny."

"Take a few sips, sit down, I'll catch you up to speed." She patted his arm and Simon barely avoided flinching.

The whole surreal feeling of the day only intensified. He'd been here before - back when it wasn't covered in police tape and being processed as a crime scene, with various technicians combing for fingerprints and bagging minutiae that could hopefully be helpful. He'd been here before - back when it was just Bobby Fulbright's apartment. One night in a proper bed, Foolbright had said, sleeping on the futon while Simon was less uncomfortable than he thought he would have been in the actual bed. He'd examined things then, of course. Plain and spartan and just a little messy around the edges. The big calendar with the date of his execution circled but nothing written there. Now the techs were pulling apart the furniture, finding the planted bugs and hidden stashes, peeling back the veneer of Bobby Fulbright to reveal the Phantom underneath. It made him queasy to think about too hard.

"All right, so. ...Go ahead, take a sip," Detective Skye cajoled him. He looked down at his drink with a deep frown, and Skye sighed. "Or not. Okay, okay. So first things first - this was a good idea," she said, raising the evidence bag full of rubber gloves with the Phantom's fingerprints on the tips, "but we don't actually need it. I was able to easily lift a print from his toothbrush, and the security systems had recently been relaxed to only require a fingerprint and check of a human underneath but no specific biometrics. So I just wrapped the print around my finger and bam, there we go, his hidden safe open. Our computer forensic whiz-kid is busy cracking the password to his personal files which are probably going to be of more interest to national security than anything else, but there was some interesting stuff in that safe. Ah, let's see..." She reached behind her, pulling out yet another bag. "Here we go. His morning pill course. No, those aren't vitamins. This is preliminary mind you, but so far the lab is guessing at least two beta-blockers and several mood stabilizers."

Idly, Simon took a sip of the drink in his hand. It was... absolutely delicious, actually, in a fluffy and creamy sort of way. He attempted to look as serious as possible as to not give himself away. "And the consequences of such a chemical cocktail would be...?"

"Severely impaired emotional responses. Hell, you could probably get Meekins to pass a lie detector test when he says he's not the one who writes passive-aggressive notes in the break room fridge."

Blackquill stared at her in dead silence. She coughed nervously. "It's funny, because, uh, Meekins... you haven't met him, I guess, so I'm just gonna, uh, change of topic! What've we got so far on the whole computer situation?"

"Looking good, ma'am," the detective seated at the computer chattered. "With that fingerprint, accessing the confidential files was a piece of cake. Downloading all of the data now to comb through later, but I've been taking a look at the records of changes..." He tabbed down a few entries on the screen and pursed his lips in thought. "Looks like he kicked down the settings in the past few days."

Detective Skye's eyebrows furrowed, but Blackquill beat her to the punch: "How so?"

"Well, like the biometrics. Normally it's supposed to record more than just warmth and the fingerprint - it's supposed to get exact body temperature and heartbeat as well as proximity of an RIFD chip. At least, that's all it's set up to do. Within the last week, about half of its parameters were set to auto-accept. It's the strangest thing. It's almost like..."

"He knew we'd be coming," Simon interrupted, tone distant in thought. "And wanted us to be welcome."

"Well... yeah," the technician said nervously. "I guess that's one way to put it. I was thinking more about the criminal will to be caught, but, you know, it's all - oh fuck." His tone dropped as soon as he looked back to the screen. Something flickered and flashed before being replaced by a progress bar. "_Fuck_ - FUCK!"

"Jesus, calm down Kincade, tell me what's happening -" Detective Skye's tone was suddenly all business to the point of being militaristic.

"I thought I was admin, it told me I had admin powers, _this shouldn't be happening_ - ma'am, I'm not the only one in here - somebody's overriding my commands -" His hands hovered helplessly above the keyboard. "Shit, I don't -"

In one swift movement Detective Skye pulled the desk towards the technician, making him wheeze a little as it hit him in the stomach, and delivered one clean stomp right on top of the outlet where the computer cords connected into the wall for internet access. ...and for power, apparently, as the screen flickered then died.

"Problem solved," she said with a tense nervousness. "...Get the whole bit back to the lab. Corrupted data's better than no data, right?"

"Yes, sir," he said with a sigh of relief. "...S-sorry, sir, I didn't -"

"It's all right, Kincade." She patted his shoulder lightly. "I think this case is getting to all of us, in our own ways. I'll help you clean up here, and we'll pick things back up tomorrow." Detective Skye looked not at Kincade, but at Simon as she said this.

He got the message.

"Thank you again, Skye-dono, for this, ah..." Simon looked down at what was in his hands. "Beverage...?"

"Frappuchino. It's called a frappuchino." Her smile was less formal and more kind. "See you in the morning, Blackquill."

* * *

Aura's apartment had been done up ready to welcome him home.

He laid on the futon pondering the streamers hung up in the kitchen pass-through and doorways for an awfully long time, alternating with staring at Taka patiently preening itself. In fact, he wasn't sure he got any sleep at all. But it was what it was. The sun came up the next morning on the decorations and the fancy tin of good matcha powder whether or not he wanted it to, and when it was finally morning, he got up to start the day regardless of how prepared he felt for it.

* * *

They'd made her take her hair down. That was the first thing Simon noticed as they let Aura into the visitation room. She seemed oddly - well, oddly like Metis had been, with a strangely cultivated peace around her. But this was more the sort of peace after one becomes too tired to cry anymore. She was smiling, though. That was a good sign. Wright had gingerly but firmly deferred her case, instead recommending a lawyer who specialized in plea deals, and all seemed to be going well. A sympathetic judge could shave off decades, and the lawyers knew how to find one.

He'd brought her coffee. And then they stared at each other.

"So," she said, trying to start a sentence that could hold itself up under the weighty silence.

"So."

There was a lot to say - a lot of words between siblings. Instead Simon told her about the new developments in the case. Her lips pursed into a tight frown, her mind as sharp as Simon's but not usually preoccupied with the criminal element.

"This Fulbright, then - it was the Phantom before you knew him? You've only ever known the impostor?"

"Yes. I - "

There was something in his voice, something that made her lean back in something like shock. "Oh, Simon..."

He gulped. His voice had shook: that was it. That was what she had picked up on. A tremble of emotion, and now her eyes were darting across his face, putting together threads into a clear tapestry.

"You _didn't_, did you?"

The sentence was vague but they both knew exactly what it meant. _It_. Two bodies writhing in one bed. Panting breaths in each others' ears. An irrevocable mistake. He didn't need to answer, but he did, throat dry.

"Only once."

"Oh... oh, Simon..."

Her pity was damning. Their relationship had always been a friendly sparring match, less good boys and girls and more lion cubs going with claws-in at each other every moment they could. The last time she'd pitied him - the memory danced across his thoughts, unbidden - his parrotlets had died, and she'd helped him line a shoebox with an old towel and dig the hole to bury them in - she'd even gone and found a little garden decoration for a headstone - and she had been so cloyingly, so smotheringly nice to him -

He stood up abruptly. "I'm sorry, sister. I should be going."

"Of course. I understand. ...Be careful, Simon. Please?"

* * *

The conversation stuck in his mind like gum to the bottom of a good pair of dress shoes, snapping with every step and ruining the spotlessness he demanded of his thoughts. It caused him to oversteep his cup of green tea by half a minute, making it just bitter enough to taste. And it had taken him far too long to find the honey in the miserable little breakroom. Other officers could deal with black coffee, but he could not. It seemed simultaneously grimy and sterile, with all coffee cups and mugs the same and the notices about leaving dishes typed on company letterhead. The microwave smelled vaguely of fish and donuts. He drowned his drink in the honey, crystallized and forgotten as it was, and then stomped out into the facility in an even worse mood than before.

Technically, it was part of the same place where Aura was being held, but only in technicality. It was several miles away, for one thing, and had its own security of neurotic levels. He'd had his identity checked five times coming in, and he expected just as many times going out. The list of people held in such places was an exercise in bulletpointing infamy: seven serial killers, one cannibal, and three suspected terrorists who had been convicted of treason. Oh, and now a spy.

The prisoner's room-within-a-room was, quite frankly, cozy, if he ignored how the man had been given no privacy at all. Even the shower and bathroom corner was not exempt. All of the walls were solid clear plastic, surrounded on all sides by men and women with tables carefully monitoring, cataloguing, observing every movement. In the center was a familiar huddled form, in nurse's scrubs now, still wearing the surgical mask. Even as he raved he tried to pull it over to the side to cover his burn. The language went past Simon in a blur, and his attention was pulled to a familiar figure hailing him down.

"Ah. Good morning, Skye-dono."

The detective puffed out her chest at this, evidently pleased. She tossed a look to her subordinate behind her - a sort of 'see, he gets it!' glance - before turning back to Blackquill. "Morning. You look like hell, by the way, I'm guessing your first night on the outside in quite awhile didn't work very well."

"Sadly correct," he admitted, stirring his green tea and throwing a glance to the room-within-the-room. The Phantom had slid down by inches until he hit the floor, curling up in full kowtow to try and prevent anyone from seeing his face.

Simon didn't even have to ask a question - Skye took over almost immediately. "That's Goguryean he's speaking. So apparently he's an agent of the New Goguryeo Republic. Which is neither a republic, nor really all that new, but instead a creamy center of human rights disasters with a crunchy totalitarian dictator coating. So at least we know where he's from?" She shrugged, and Simon probably would have mirrored the action had he not been in the middle of drinking his tea and wishing he had an IV drip of more of the same. "Anyway, Kim there - long hair, nice pencil skirt - she knows Goguryean, so she's been translating. It's pretty much been what you'd expect, though. Begging to his handlers to not kill him, that sort of thing."

A third party to the conversation walked up behind them, hands in his white labcoat. "Ah, I see we're admiring our very own complete mental breakdown here." Simon jumped, and Taka bristled, but Simon quickly moved to shake the man's hand after turning to see him. He was older, with frizzled white hair, and cracked a sad half-grin at them both. "Dr. Turner. Resident shrink. Officially, I'm somewhere in this mess as part of his medical staff," he said, gesturing towards the Phantom. "I looked over the medicine list the good detective just handed me, and it's no wonder we're seeing this. He's in for a rough withdrawal."

"Withdrawal? I thought most of those were simple beta-blockers, weren't they?" Skye frowned, reaching up to tap at her glasses in thought.

"Not all. The mood stabilizers..." Turner shook his head. "Most of them are old-school. One step away from lithium, if you get my drift. His liver's probably half shot from being on such a cocktail, and it's a wonder his cover wasn't blown by side effects alone. So coming off them, well..." Turner gestured to the room-within-a-room. "It's rough. Even for normal people."

Simon said nothing, instead turning to face the plastic walls. The other room was slightly raised, the one entrance and exit heavily locked and bolted and accessible only by stairs which were also behind a barrier. The raised nature of the room meant that he could only barely see over the top of the Phantom as the other man huddled against the plastic, sobbing, hands over his head.

"What I'm saying is that we probably shouldn't expect anything useful from him for a few days."

"That means we could be losing out on valuable intelligence, though," Skye sighed. "We could wean him back on some of the medications? He'd be more of a flight risk, but..."

"No."

They both turned to look at Simon, surprised he had rejoined the conversation. He took a long sip of his green tea before slamming down the mug and drawing himself up to full high, squaring his shoulders, knowing he was looking his most intimidating. And he saw the nervous awe in their eyes. He was still, despite everything, the Twisted Samurai.

"I can get him to talk. I _will_ get him to talk."


End file.
